Policy Priorities
- Holding the bureaucracy accountable
- Preventing bureaucratic abuses
- Cutting red tape
- Reducing Crony Capitalism
- Preventing discrimination based on immutable characteristics
- Protecting freedom of speech from cancel culture and tech censorship
The American republic was founded as a government by, for, and of the people, to defend the people’s rights — but sadly that aspiration at times seems like a distant dream. Policymakers empower unelected bureaucracies that rule huge swaths of American life. Legislative, judicial, and executive power has become concentrated within the regulatory agencies themselves. As a result, regulatory agencies effect massive shifts in policy that elected representatives never voted on. Various protections empower the career bureaucrats to pursue their own preferred policies with little regard to the views of elected officials. What began two-and-a-half centuries ago as man’s greatest experiment in self-governance looks now like rule without consent of the governed. Meanwhile, the federal government ignores growing threats to American liberties like cancel culture, tech censorship, and state-sanctioned racial discrimination. The Center for American Freedom exists to defend American freedom from both government and non-governmental threats. It will conduct research and generate policies that cut the red tape of burdensome regulations, defend fundamental rights, and restore American governance as originally intended.
The Founders designed the Constitution to protect the people’s rights and hold the government accountable. They believed that concentrated power was vulnerable to abuse, so they divided federal authority between executive, legislative, and judicial branches. They further required the executive and legislative branches to regularly stand for re-election, holding policymakers accountable to those they govern. And they strictly limited the federal government’s authority, leaving most governing power to state and local government. The contemporary administrative state circumvents these constitutional protections. The federal government needs to return to these constitutional safeguards that protect Americans’ liberties. It also needs to take vigorous action to defend the American people’s rights from emerging non-governmental threats, such as cancel culture and tech censorship.
Team
Latest
Op-Ed
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December 31, 2023
Let The Voters Decide
The news that a bare majority on the Colorado Supreme Court denied President Donald J. Trump a spot on the statewide ballot, now joined by Maine, ricocheted around progressive corners like the shot at Lexington Green. Watching it inspired a sense of weary familiarity, as the latest magic talisman to banish Trump from American life was celebrated, elevated, and invoked for further use. This isn’t the first by a long shot: they’ve tried nearly everything since history’s most-famous escalator ride in summer 2015, from a late-campaign media hit, to a conspiracy theory on Russia, to an impeachment, to scurrilous press narratives, to outright insurrectionary violence, to election manipulation, to a second impeachment, to a flurry of motivated prosecutions, and now this. Each time they think they’ve got the singular item for his eradication — and each time it fails. But because this is a crowd more interested in destroying history than learning from it, they resort to the same effort over and over again, with the same result.
Op-Ed
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December 15, 2023
Revisiting The Boston Tea Party 250 Years Later
This 250th anniversary of one of the precipitating events of the American Revolution comes upon us at a historical moment strikingly similar to that faced by the American patriots of that era. In an age in which popular memory simplifies the events of the past too much, too often, it’s worth engaging the history at hand: especially on the Boston Tea Party, which by its nature brings to light the fundamental issues that move Americans to fight for liberty then — and now.
Policy
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November 21, 2023
AFPI Comment on Proposed Office of Personnel Management Regulation That Would Prevent the Reinstatement of Schedule F
America First Policy Institute (AFPI) submits the following comments in opposition to the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) proposed rule purporting to extend removal protections to career officials in positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating character (hereafter “policy-influencing positions”). See Upholding Civil Service Protections and Merit System Principles, 88 Fed. Reg. 63862 (proposed Sept. 18, 2023), Docket ID OPM–2023–0013, RIN 3206–AO56.
Op-Ed
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November 11, 2023
Biden Puts Pleasing Unions Ahead Of Veterans’ Health
As we approach Veterans Day, President Biden has given America’s 20 million veterans a strange sign of appreciation. His administration is rehiring thousands of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees who were dismissed during the Trump Administration for poor performance or misconduct. Unfortunately, patient care will suffer from these reinstatements. The Biden Administration has put pleasing federal unions ahead of veterans’ health.
Issue Brief
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September 20, 2023
Biden Administration Proposal Insulates the Bureaucracy from Accountability
Civil service rules make firing career federal employees prohibitively difficult, whether for poor performance or intransigence. President Donald Trump created a new “Schedule F” that would enable agencies to dismiss career employees from policy-influencing positions. That executive order allowed the president to hold key portions of the federal bureaucracy accountable and ensure that policy was made by the American people’s elected representatives. However, President Joseph Biden rescinded it shortly after taking office.
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